A Spinning Test

Remember the Chocolate Bar roving I've been spinning for sock yarn. It seemed to take me forever to spin the 3 ounces I'd started with. The first 1.5 oz ball went fairly quick but about 1/3rd into the second batch I hit a lo-o-ng section of murky light brown that didn't spin as smoothly and became psychologically hard for me to keep spinning. This week I determined to finish it. My speed picked up when the dye job varied back into the richer browns.

While spinning I've often wondered how many yards of spun yarn I average out of one yard of roving. Thursday evening as I neared the roving end I measured a yard in from the end, tied a piece of yarn at the 1 yard spot then measured the next yard of roving and tied another piece. Then as I continued spinning and reached the piece of yarn marking two yards left to spin I check the clock and timed how long it took to spin one yard to a fairly thin single. Thirty five minutes. Hmm, a bit faster than I'd thought. At that point it was past my bedtime so I stopped for the night which was fine since I was also curious to see what my consistency would be on two different spinning days.

Saturday morning I grabbed the spindle and remaining yard of roving, checked the clock and started in. It was one of those mornings where it felt as though it took awhile to get into a rhythm. To my surprise it also took 35 minutes!

Using the warping board to unwind the single I counted out the wraps as I circled the spindle around and around the pegs which are set one yard apart. Hmm. 1 yard roving = 18yds,26inches of spun single. Not too shabby. What would the second yard yield? Imagin my immense astonishment as the last of the single came off the spindle at:
Yes -- 18yds 26inches!!! I am blown away by this. I figured that if my singles measured within a yard of each other I'd be spinning pretty consistantly but this is phenomenal.